Rudy Vega, a member of The Photographers Exchange, will be providing a slide show about his Japan exhibit at the Reflections Gallery, Santa Ana (OC), CA this Friday, October 3rd, 2008. Everyone is to meet at the gallery at 7pm and then move a couple of doors down to a space to have the slide show at 8pm.

This will an opportunity to see the larger body of work that Rudy has developed from the this series and more information about how he assembles and constructs the final photographic images.

The Sylvia White Gallery, Ventra, CA has a call for enteries for a group show, to be juged by Sylvia White, on the theme Beyond Toys.

Cultures are defined by the toys they play with. Whether child or adult, we embrace our toys with a passion reserved solely for special, favorite possessions. The art of our generation is unique in that almost for the first time in art history, toys, cartoon characters and icons from Pop Culture are central to the development of serious fine art. All artists that make art of or about toys will be considered.

Juried by: Sylvia White:

Eligibility: Open to all U.S./Canadian resident artists at least 18 years of age. Exception: Artists currently represented by Contemporary Artists’ Services.Media: painting, mixed media, works on paper, photography, sculpture, installation art and performance.

Founded in 1981, Women In Photography International (WIPI) is the most recognized organization for women photographers worldwide. WIPI completes the year by announcing “The 2008 Competition” – a juried call for entries of traditional and non-traditional images.

Photolucida’s Critical Mass 2008 is now open for submissions! (okay, this is a couple of days late) The deadline for your submission is Oct 3rd. This is a really great opportunity to achieve some wide visibility if you make it through the entire two step process.

I think that they say it best:

The aim of Critical Mass, and all Photolucida programming, is to provide participants with career-building opportunities and to promote the best emerging and mid-career artists working today.

Critical Mass is a program about exposure and community. The idea is simple- photographers (from anywhere) submit a 10 image portfolio for $75. This work then gets pre-screened by a committee of 25 great jurors and from there, 175 top finalists are determined.

These top finalists then pay an additional submission fee and their work goes on to a jury of approximately 200 of the world’s best curators, editors, and professionals who have agreed to vote on these finalists. From these votes, two or three photographers receive book awards and once the monographs are published, everyone who enters and reviews will receive copies of the books.

The 2008 pre-screening committee includes our own local galleriest, Susan Spiritus of the Susan Spiritus Gallery.

Well, that’s enough for now, as I have to get back to my own submission for this wonderful opportunity;- )

The Power of Art 2008 will be back at the AES Power station for three days, over the Oct 17-19, 2008, with an artist reception on Oct 17 from 7 – 10pm. This is a multi-media exhibit sponsored by the Redondo Beach Art Group, (RBAG) who are raising funds for a Creative Art Center for Redondo Beach.

Diane Reeves, a member of The Photo Exchange and RBAG, is among the members of the Exchange who will be exhibiting, and “LA Staircases” is one of two works that will be exhibited. Her introspective work is a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, that expands the typical two dimensional layers of the photograhic print.

Well the big photographic trade show Photokina 2008 is wrapping up, and some of the news is the Adobe Photoshop CS4, which you can find more info here at Outback Photo, and the Canon 5D Mk II, a 21MP 14 bit camera system, also find info at Outback Photo, as well as the Sony Alpha 900, a 24 Mp camera system, full frame, and more info from DPReview, with both the Canon and Sony are being priced at $3,000. Nice.

The 23 Sandy Gallery (Portland, OR) is having a National Juried Exhibition, theme is Shelter, which is being juried by Randy Gragg.

The Theme is Architecture, habitat, sanctuary. Shelter is one of our most basic human needs—at once both physical and psychological. We derive great pride from the shelter we build. We seek shelter from the elements, from the storm, from harm. How can shelter be interpreted visually given its myriad manifestations? Go out. Seek shelter. Make shelter. Tell us a story.

Janos Lanyi was juried into The Art for Democracy Tustin (OC) exhibit, Left, Right and Center, a project of Patrick Merrill and the Tustin Old Town Gallery, Tustin, California working in collaboration with the national Art of Democracy exhibition coalition.

The exhibition dates are October 8th thru November 8th, 2008, with the artist reception on Sunday, Nov 2nd, from 2-5pm.